Adverse Event Reporting: What Is It?

Note: This was originally posted on: EMRandEHR.comEric Duncan’s Ebola death in Dallas was, to say the least, an adverse event (AE). Famously now, when he had a high fever, pronounced pain, etc., he went to Texas Health’s Presbyterian Hospital’s ER, and was sent home with antibiotics. Three days later much worse, he came back by ambulance.

In the aftermath of Duncan’s death, the hospital’s EHR, EPIC, came in for blame, though it was later cleared. Many questions have come from Duncan’s death including how our medical system handles such problems. Articles often use the term adverse event, but rarely mention reporting. I think it’s important to take a direct look at our adverse event reporting systems and where EHR and AEs are headed. This note looks at AE systems. The next looks at where EHRs fit in.

The FDA: Ground Zero for Adverse Event Reports

HHS’ Food and Drug Administration has prime, but not exclusive, jurisdiction over adverse reports breaking them into three classes:

Medicines

Medical Devices, and

Vaccines.

Four FDA systems cover these classes:

FAERS. This is FDA’s system for drug related adverse reports. It collects information for FDA’s post marketing for drug and biologic product surveillance. For example, if there’s a problem with Prozac, it’s reported here.

MAUDE. The Manufacturer and User Facility Device Experience reporting system. If an X-Ray machine malfunctions or lab equipment operates defectively, this is where the report goes.

MEDSUN. This is voluntary, device reporting system gathers more detailed information than MAUD. It’s run by as a collaboration of the FDA and several hundred hospitals, clinics, etc. (Disclosure: My wife was MAUD project system developer.) MEDSUN captures details and incidents, such as close calls or events that may have had a potential for harm, but did not cause any. MEDSUN has two subsystems, HeartNet, which is for electrophysiology labs and KidNet for neonatal and pediatric ICUs.

MEDSUN Reporting Poster

State AV Reporting Systems

Several states require AV reporting in addition to FDA reports. Twenty-seven states and DC require AV reports, with varying coverage and reporting requirements. Some states, such as Pennsylvania, have an extensive, public system for reporting and analysis.

If you delve into an AV reporting systems, you’ll quickly see some institutions are more present than others. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are prone to bad events. In fact, these may be the most safety conscious who report more of their events than others. Moreover, high reporters often have policies that encourage AE reporting to find systemic problems without punitive consequences.

Many safety prevention systems work this way. Those in charge recognize it’s important to get all the facts out. They realize adopting a punitive approach drives behavior underground.

For example, the FAA has learned this the hard way. Recently on vacation, I met two air traffic controllers who contrasted the last Bush administration’s approach to now. Under Bush’s FAA errors were subject to public shaming. The result was that many systemic problems were hidden. Now, the FAA encourages reporting and separates individual behavior. The result is that incidents are more reported and more analyzed. If individual behavior is culpable, it’s addressed as needed.

In the next part, I’ll look at how EHRs fit into the current system and the congressional efforts to exempt them from reporting AEs, a move that I think is akin to putting pennies in a fuse box.

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